Gemini cites fewer sources than any other engine we track, 3.5 per answer, and it leans on a short list: Reddit, Writesonic's roundups, Zapier and a few other software companies' roundups. Its 10 most-cited target sites took half of the citations to its top 100, and nine of the 12 sites listed against "best Otterly AI alternative" in its top 100 were about Otter.ai, a different product.
This note looks at Gemini alone; the cross-engine headline numbers are in what seven AI engines cite. Each number below says which of two lists it comes from:
- All hosts counts every cited site except cituna.com, including the domains of the competitors Cituna tracks and the engines' own properties.
- Target sites leaves out those two groups: what remains is publishers, directories, communities and the blogs of companies outside the tracked list.
How many sources Gemini cites
Gemini's 552 answers carried 1,910 third-party citations, or 3.5 per answer. The other six engines average 8.7. Google's help page says Gemini may show links to sources and related content, and that not every response includes them.
Gemini cited 147 different target sites, against an average of 206 for the other engines. Its top 100 reaches down to sites with a single citation, so its total is known: target sites took 580 citations, and the other 1,330 (69.6%) went to tracked competitors' domains or the engines' own properties.
The sites Gemini cites most
Counting all hosts, the top five were llmpulse.ai (111 citations), aiclicks.io (61), geoptie.com (61), reddit.com (55) and writesonic.com (53). The first three are tracked competitors' domains; Reddit and Writesonic are target sites. Together the five took 341 citations, 17.9% of the total, close to the other engines' average of 17.4%.
| Site | Page kind | Citations |
|---|---|---|
| reddit.com | Community | 55 |
| writesonic.com | Roundup | 53 |
| zapier.com | Roundup | 39 |
| integrate.io | Roundup | 27 |
| shadow.inc | Roundup | 21 |
| alhena.ai | Roundup | 20 |
| layer3labs.io | Roundup | 17 |
| blog.hubspot.com | Roundup | 14 |
| nohacks.co | Article | 12 |
| voicescriber.com | Roundup | 11 |
These 10 took 14.1% of Gemini's third-party citations, close to the 14.4% average elsewhere. Measured within its top 100 target sites, though, they took 50.5%, against an average of 41.6%. Gemini returns to the same few target sites more than most engines do. The tenth, voicescriber.com, was cited for a page about alternatives to Otter.ai (more on that below).
Of Gemini's top 100 target sites, 39 were cited by no other engine, but they were small: together they took 17.4% of those sites' citations, below the 21.3% average elsewhere.
What kinds of pages Gemini reads
| Page kind | Sites | Citations | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Roundups | 71 | 399 | 74.9% |
| Articles | 23 | 64 | 12.0% |
| Community | 2 | 59 | 11.1% |
| Review sites | 2 | 9 | 1.7% |
| Reference | 2 | 2 | 0.4% |
| Video | 0 | 0 | 0.0% |
Roundups take more than the other engines' average (74.9% against 65.9%), and articles less (12.0% against 16.7%). Community is almost all Reddit: 55 of the 59 citations, with dev.to supplying the other four. Gemini cited youtube.com once in the window and linkedin.com not at all. Reddit, YouTube and LinkedIn in AI answers compares those three sites across engines.
Where Gemini misreads the question
| Subject of the cited pages | Question it answered | Sites | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Otter.ai alternatives | best Otterly AI alternative | 9 | 40 |
| How to cite ChatGPT | how to get cited by ChatGPT | 3 | 8 |
Those 48 citations are 9.0% of the citations to Gemini's top 100 target sites, second only to Perplexity's 9.7%. The other six engines average 2.7%.
The Otterly misread is Gemini's largest. Otterly.AI is one of the AI visibility tools the questions ask about; Otter.ai describes itself as an AI notetaker and transcription tool. Of the 12 sites listed against "best Otterly AI alternative" in Gemini's top 100, nine were cited for pages listing Otter.ai alternatives: voicescriber.com (11), voicedash.ai (9), atlasworkspace.ai (6), thebusinessdive.com (5), owll.ai (3), tana.inc (3), cluely.com, bitrix24.com and castmagic.io (one each). Two more point at a Fireflies pricing page and a Fathom listing. Only the twelfth, Wikipedia's Otterly.ai article, names the tool the question was about.
The second misread flips "how to get cited by ChatGPT" into how to cite ChatGPT. casrai.org (3), scribbr.com (3) and deepnotis.com (2) were cited for citation-style guides; Scribbr's page covers citing ChatGPT in APA, MLA and Chicago style.
Which questions Gemini answers from which sites
Each site in our data lists up to three of the tracked questions it was cited for. Gemini's top 100 target sites carry 132 such listings:
- The six "alternative to X" questions: 43 listings, 39 of them roundups.
- Tool-choice questions (best tracker, price, Search Console, API, audits): 59 listings, 46 roundups, nine articles and three community listings.
- How-to and definition questions: 30 listings, 15 roundups and 13 articles.
"How to get cited by ChatGPT" has the most listings, 13: six roundups, six articles and Reddit, including the three citation-style guides above. Reddit's own listings are that question, tracking brand mentions across ChatGPT and Perplexity, and the Search Console question.
How Gemini compares with the other six engines
| Measure | Gemini | Other six, average |
|---|---|---|
| Third-party citations per answer | 3.5 | 8.7 |
| Target sites cited | 147 | 206 |
| Top 5 of all hosts, share of third-party citations | 17.9% | 17.4% |
| Top 10 target sites, share of third-party citations | 14.1% | 14.4% |
| Top 10 target sites, share of top-100 target citations | 50.5% | 41.6% |
| Roundups, share of top-100 target citations | 74.9% | 65.9% |
| Community and video, share of top-100 target citations | 11.1% | 15.0% |
| Top-100 target citations to sites no other engine cited | 17.4% | 21.3% |
| Top-100 target citations to misread pages | 9.0% | 2.7% |
For a brand in this category, two things follow. Gemini cites few sources and keeps returning to the same ones, so being on those few sites matters more here than being on many (how to get cited by Gemini). And a name close to another product's name is a real risk here; how to correct wrong information about your brand in AI answers covers what you can do about it.
Method and limits
What was counted. A citation is one source URL shown in one answer, grouped by site. Third-party figures leave out cituna.com. The target list also leaves out the tracked competitors' own domains and the engines' own properties. Gemini's file ranks its 100 most-cited target sites; its cutoff is one citation, so ties there were broken arbitrarily, and the 47 target sites outside it had one citation each. Page kinds are the labels in Cituna's data. Each site lists up to three questions and up to three sample page addresses, and misreads were judged from those addresses, so the misread count is a floor. The cross-engine note counted misreads from a combined list of sites, so its figures differ slightly from these.
The window. 33 scans in the 30 days to 22 September 2026, which produced 552 Gemini answers. "Other six, average" is the plain average of the six other engines' figures.
The questions. They are about one software category, AI visibility tools, and they are the questions Cituna tracks for itself, listed in the cross-engine note.
What the numbers can and cannot show. They show which sites Gemini cited for these questions in this window. They cannot show why it chose them, how it behaves in other categories or markets, or what any one user sees, because answers vary by account, location and time. Site-level counts cannot separate one page from another on the same site. The full method is on the methodology page.